Street Sense Media: Mayor’s proposed housing affordability bill faces scrutiny at D.C. Council hearing

This article is part of the D.C. Homeless Crisis Reporting Project in collaboration with other local newsrooms. The collective works will be published throughout the week at bit.ly/DCHCRP.

Street Sense Editorial Intern Chih-Rong Kuo recently covered a hearing to discuss Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposed Housing Investment Protection Act, a follow-up to the Rebalancing Expectations for Neighbors, Tenants, and Landlords (RENTAL) Act, which passed in 2025. The over five-hour meeting included testimony from small landlords, affordable housing providers, and nonprofits, who were split on the impact the bill’s provisions could have.

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The proposed bill gives housing providers the right to enter the rental unit for any reasonable purpose as long as they have provided reasonable notice to the tenant, and stipulates the housing provider shall have a key or other means of access to the rental unit at all times.

Children’s Law Center Senior Policy Attorney Makenna Osborn, who testified at the hearing, is quoted:

“The remedies that this act proposes to add, specifically ones that are beyond just injunctive relief to allow access, could cause undue harm to tenants considering how fact-specific and complicated sometimes those access questions are,” Makenna Osborn, senior policy attorney at Children’s Law Center, said.